Friday, August 11, 2017

The true gift of poetry as an art form is its deft use of
air. Of space. Of pauses and gaps into which the reader can pour him- or
herself.

Blue takes these
strengths of poetry and puts them to maximum use. With its glossy pages, blue
and black ink, illustrations, and numerous typefaces, Blue looks like and reads with the speed of a children’s picture
book, but don’t mistake the design for simplicity—Blue invites and rewards multiple readings, each with its own
approach.

For instance, the first time I read the book, I took it in
as a single poem, telling only one story. The second time, I used a panel with
a quote by e.e. cummings as a dividing line between two acts—one that takes as
its central character love of a human and the second love of God.

The third time I focused on each passage as delineated by
its typeface. This third approach is like reading a book of Asian poetry or
koans. Each passage is its own rich moment, an invitation to meditate upon its
many meanings.

Although St. Jo and Grefalda are the co-authors (with St. Jo
contributing the abundant and engaging illustrations), there is no delineation
as to which passages were written by which poet. This adds to the overall
mystery and allure of Blue. In truth,
there are not just two voices, but many.

For the purpose of this review, I am going to say that the
book is divided into two stories, Man and God. But this is my own
interpretation—they are not labeled as such, nor does the e.e. cummings quote
absolutely guarantee a division. In Man, the authors engage the trope of the
world traveler, using Phileas Fogg and Passepartout in allusion, illustration,
and in the latter’s case, by name. They also play on “Eyes of Blue,” which
calls to mind the classic “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue.” The authors’ use of
“lose you to a song” in blue ink appears to reinforce this notion. The Man
seems to be off in search of something, which the author(s) hope(s) will either
bring him back, or that they will travel the world together “in Denim Blue.”

The e.e. cumming’s poem signals a switch to God: “I thank
you God for most this amazing day … and a blue dream of sky…”

There is a subtle shift in tone (though the blue is still
blue, as it were) in the section I call God. There are italicized passages that
sound biblical, looming large and philosophical. Passages like: “You are/ Beloved,/He said./Perfect/As you
are, He said.” While the author replies, “Sleep/Overtakes/Me,/I said./Rest/Frightens me,/I said.”

God does not give up, until the author says, after continued
resistance, “So as/You will it, God”

And in the final pages we come back to song (“damn you
song”) and I wondered as I read and meditated, is it the same song from the
start? But it is not: “i whistle out of tune/some nonsense i composed/with you
in my heart” [note the small i, only appearing on the final page].

Read Blue as you
choose. Perhaps the suggestions in this review will spark a path, but it’s best
to ponder its images, meditate on its typefaces, and choose your own way through
the blue.

Half a dozen years ago, a
package arrived in the mail from a publisher. As I made the half mile walk back
from the mailbox toward my house on a hill on the far side of a West Virginia
hollow, I pulled back the tab on the top of the mailer and out spilled The Toltec I-Ching, a beautifully
illustrated new take on the venerable divining method of ancient China.

Sending an email to the
publisher that afternoon, I said that I would put the book thoroughly through
its paces as a self-help guide, as I was in the midst of making several
important decisions, both professionally and personally. The Toltec I-Ching, my review of which is available at New Mystics
Reviews, was more than helpful—it was life changing. Taking the complexity of
the trigrams and hexagrams of the I-Ching and breaking them down into
understandable explanations, Horden, along with his illustrator, allowed me to
access insights that yielded immediate results on application. I recommended
the book to others, and shared it with many visitors to my home who were also
seeking some guidance.

Early last year I had the
opportunity to review another of Horden’s books, In theOneness of Time: The
Education of a Diviner. I was struck by its nonlinear format and Horden’s
ease of language with complex spiritual and cultural ideas. Horden is a very
capable storyteller, with just the right mix of levity and brevity—in that
sense, a true shaman.

Way of the Diviner is a companion volume
to In theOneness of Time. It is by no means a replication of the material of
its predecessor. It is a peek behind the curtains while simultaneously offering
a look down the road, from the best of all vantage points—Way of the Diviner is very much of and about the Now.

Using a combination of personal
anecdotes, teachings from his three instructors, illustrations that he has
created for his multi-volume series on I Ching divination, spiritual parables, synchronicity,
alien abductions, channeling, and explorations of the I Ching and other systems
for divination and transformation (“shaman, spirituality, alchemy, and
immortality,” p. 2), Horden goes deeper into the ether than in any of the other
books of his I have read (several more than mentioned here). You will also find
passages that contribute to some of the leading work being produced in areas
such as Angelology, Authenticity, and Dreamwork. There are also reproductions
from some of the paintings from TheToltec I Ching and some of Horden’s
stunning nature photography.

Honoring the nonlinear
realities of time, Horden titles chapter 1 “Ending” and chapter 2 “Beginning.”
He is coming at the complex questions inherent in divination from multiple
angles, as any good teacher does, allowing the material to fall like seeds seeking
fertile soil (meaning here the reader’s own background, interests, and need).
The chapters unfold as they will, having been written in the moment without
pre-planning—sometimes on a hillside in Mexico, other times in places about
which we are not told the details. The movement is shamanistic—the text moving
back and forth between the worlds of spirit and matter; dark and light; life
and death.

It helps to have read the books
I have already mentioned, or to be otherwise familiar with different spiritual
systems and their relationships to shamanism and divination. Way of the Diviner is by no means a
starter manual. Yet, with enough background and an open heart it is not
impenetrably mysterious. Horden has an approach that flows effortlessly between
Serious and Absurd, as he eloquently relates in chapter 11, “Enlightenment.”

I have had the pleasure and
privilege to speak one-on-one with Horden on several occasions, often for many
hours at a time, both in person and through Skype, and he is meticulous in his
word choice in those situations as he no doubt must be behind the keyboard or with
pen in hand. And yet he says, “I have been on this path for forty-five years
now and am embarrassed that I still have so much to say” (p. 50) and “I thought
about leaving this chapter on enlightenment completely blank. Perhaps it
would’ve been more appropriate” (p. 56). This humility and care is rare in a
teacher. It is a trait we need much more of.

The final chapters of the book
unveil a series of advanced concepts, which Horden demystifies with abundant
personal and spiritual examples and his considerable ability to use metaphor as
a tool for teaching, distilling them down into phrases such as “Make of Yourself
a Nest for the Phoenix” and “Sweeping Shadows without Raising Dust.”

Within these chapters are
exercises for turning down the volume of the conscious mind so that we can
attune with the One Mind. I have used these exercises for many months and they
not only focus the mind during meditation and relaxation but help to quell the
racing thoughts that I struggle with as both a writer/creative and as someone
who grapples with anxiety. Horden calls these “Taking the reins in our hands
instead of being dragged across the field.” They are nothing less.

Ever the consummate storyteller,
Horden ends Way of the Diviner with a
tale about an experience he had in Veracruz and, ever the humble student, the
final section holds the ceremonial words of one of his teachers.

It seems for over a decade I
have been ending a portion of my reviews with something like, “If you are
looking for inspiration and direction in these troubled times…” As long as
times are troubled—and that might just be the eternal way of things—authors like
Horden and books like Way of the Diviner will
be the balm to heal our wounds.

Arthur Conan Doyle. Agatha
Christie. Edgar Allan Poe. Peter Straub. The Mystery genre is certainly
daunting. With such a rich heritage built over so many decades, one has to
applaud any new writer breaking into the genre. How do you honor the well-known
(and often well-worn) tropes that make the genre what it is while also bringing
something new?

Let’s face it—not bringing anything
new to a pillar of a genre such as Mystery is like playing a song note for note
as originally arranged and expecting your cover to be remembered.

With this skeptical opening in
mind, I have to congratulate Tom Kies on not only honoring what makes a good
mystery a good mystery—twists and turns, richly detailed locations, lots of
likely suspects, an overall moral depravity and subtle condemnation of society,
and of course a compelling detective—he manages to bring something new and
attention-getting to the genre: the main character’s private life literally and
figuratively competes with the mystery all the way through.

Having met Kies on a few
occasions, and knowing him for the bearded, gregarious man he is, imagine my
surprise when the first-person narrator, on page 2, says, “Sweat trailed slowly
out from under my bra…”! All levity aside, Kies does a masterful job of
bringing the highly damaged and at times unlikeable and every-bit-a-woman Geneva
Chase to life.

Kies’s background is in
journalism, so it is no surprise that Chase is a lead reporter at the fictional
Sheffield Post, where she is in
constant danger of losing her job because of her alcoholism. Ah yes… that trope: the alcoholic news reporter.
But in all tropes there must be some truth. It is a relentless, high-pressure,
deadline-driven, high-stakes game reporters play. I think of the stories of
Hunter S Thompson and films like The
Paper and the more recent Spotlight,
and Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom and
it is easy to believe that a good portion of the best reporters also have their
demons.

So far so good. Kies has
brought something new (and frankly risky) to the genre and is writing about a
field that he knows well (which shows in Chase’s relationships with the
managing editors and with the local police and in interviewing witnesses and
“chasing” down leads). Although he now lives on North Carolina’s Crystal Coast,
Kies is from the north—New England and New York. Random Road takes place in an affluent area of Connecticut, and it
is clear that Kies knows the people and the area from more than just research
and a check of Google Earth. If you are like me and want to feel like you can
see, smell, and taste the local atmosphere, especially in a mystery, you will
not be disappointed.

I hesitate to bring too much to
light in a review when it comes to a mystery. In many ways we are solidly in
the genre—horrific murders, parallel crimes that breed numerous suspects,
questions of class and wealth, a town on edge, a police force under pressure,
and a cast of characters whose moral gauge tends to run to the barely there.

Within these tropes, Kies gives
us much to keep us engaged. Geneva is a complex and interesting character—interesting
because she is honest. Her life has been one of hard drinking, adultery, and
endless bad decisions—and she knows it. When faced with the opportunity to do
some good, she tries. Some she wins, some she loses. That is true to life.

Both the A and B stories—the
solving of the murders and Geneva’s personal arc—are ripe with damaged people,
on both sides of the law. Random Road
delves into the dark underbelly of Appearance versus Reality. Almost everyone
wears a mask. Almost everyone has been hurt or is in the process of hurting
someone else. And Kies has developed the primary and secondary characters
enough that we hear their stories and can understand, if not forgive, their
aberrant behavior, because we can see its roots. No cartoony master criminals
or out-of-nowhere sociopaths in Random
Road. Just victims of their environment.

There is some irony in the
novel being called Random Road (which
is where Geneva’s primary love interest resides) because the novel has many
coincidences. At first I questioned this as convenient to the author, but then
I looked closer. It is a small community, where everyone knows one another and
it is easy to see how paths would cross. Geneva is super-sharp to boot—she
follows her nose (whenever it’s not in close proximity to a glass of vodka) and
reads the signs, all in keeping true with her billing as an ace reporter.

And to be fair, coincidence is
a necessary evil of the genre and tight storytelling in general.

Random Road is a powerful story of
love, the danger of addiction, the harm of dysfunctional families, and the
necessity of forgiveness as much as it is a tension-fueled crime drama. Kies
accomplishes a lot in his first novel and in a genre inhabited by giants.

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

In the interest of Disclosure,
I served as the editor for this book. That said, and keeping in mind the
relationship of editors like Maxwell Perkins with their writers (in his case,
no less than Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and, somewhat synchronistically—to use
Jung’s term—Thomas Wolfe), this should not preclude a fair review. Indeed, editors
are reviewing books all the time. The difference is, they have the opportunity
to provide different eyes to the author’s work before the fact, as opposed to reviewers, who do so after the fact (although I have done a
number of pre-publication reviews that precipitated changes before
publication).

But enough of that. I agreed to
the editing contract for the same reason that I am now reviewing Toni Wolff & C. G. Jung—Nan Savage
Healy’s detailed and insightful exploration of Jung’s unsung and nearly
obliterated collaborator shines a powerful light on Jung, whom I, like others,
practically deified as I have made my own journey through Jungian staples such
as Archetypes, Dreams, the Shadow, and Myths.

I have reviewed many books by
Jungian psychologists (e.g., Lawrence Staples and Erel Shalit) and have read
many of Jung’s books. His work is an essential part of my own in Storytelling
and I put him right up there with Joseph Campbell as one of the giants whose
shoulders I stand upon.

An essential question that I
have struggled with in the nearly three years that have elapsed since I first
heard from Nan with a request to edit this book is this: Has my estimation of
Jung decreased, increased, or stayed the same as I have learned about his
relationship with Toni Wolff, who first met Jung as a patient and soon became a
Lover, Muse, and Collaborator? I would say, after careful, continued
reflection: all and none of the above.

My reasoning for this answer
serves as the basis of this review, as I am sure that many of the reviews
written by Jungian analysts and various historians and academics of Toni Wolff & C. G. Jung cover the
nuts and bolts of the psychology and the finer points of who came up with what
theory, who wrote which part of each book or essay, and who we really owe the
credit to. This review is perhaps more personal, which may help this
outstanding book to reach an audience segment it might otherwise miss.

Make no mistake—this is a work
of deep academic excellence. The notes take up 52 pages, and the
acknowledgments illuminate the depth and width of the resources—human and
documentary—that Healy pursued to bring this book to fruition. She spoke with
descendents of Wolff and Jung and went where the winds of inquiry took her.
There is plenty of synchronicity at work, from her first stumbling upon an
essay by Toni Wolff up through the book’s completion and I can tell you that I
edited the book not once, but twice (and I understand considerable work was
done after the fact while adding the 101 images that bring the words to life
and give the reader a different kind of insight into Wolff and Jung), all the
result of Healy’s commitment to tell Toni Wolff’s story as best as she can.

Toni Wolff’s story is very much
inextricable from Jung’s, and from men’s in general. Coming from a wealthy
household, college was not a proper option for her—and her lack of a degree was
something she continually worked to overcome. After the death of her father and
the subsequent responsibility she took for the family’s well-being and
finances, she sought therapy from Jung (who took his own father’s death hard as
well), and he instantly saw her genius. At the time she was a poet and very
much in tune with her dreams. As she moved from patient to lover, muse, and
collaborator, Toni abandoned poetry, focusing on the more concrete world of
psychology. In fairness to Jung, he always regretted her leaving her poetry
behind.

Fairness is a key strength of
this book. It would be easy for Healy to put it all on Jung, to portray him as
an unethical doctor who preyed on his female patients (there were others
besides Toni), ignoring the dangers of Transference for his own selfish
reasons. But she does not. Indeed, the primary reason Jung does not diminish as
a thinker, writer, and artist in my estimation through this journey is because
Nan Savage Healy Humanizes Jung, illuminating his Quests for answers in the
deep void of symbolism and the subconscious, a Quest he inspired me to take
nearly two decades ago.

In line with his Humanness is
Jung’s recognition of the Shadow and the warring aspects of one’s personality. I
have called my own warring halves Joe and Joey since college, a realization I
came to intuitively in a moment of shamanic crisis—it was not until a decade
later, listening to Michael York’s masterful reading of Memories, Dreams, Reflections that I began to understand what was
at work through Jung’s own experiences. It truly changed my life. Since that
time, I have worked through theatre, storytelling, shamanic studies, and
voracious reading and diligent spiritual practice to get to know my Shadow and
integrate the two halves of my personality. To this day, Treaties are broken
and the war ensues again. Studying the Liber
Novus and Black Books and
undertaking similar projects of my own keeps the casualties down and treaties ever
renegotiated. Toni Wolff & C. G. Jung
has been invaluable to that process (see pp. 68 and 74–77).

The one area where I am most
suspect of Jung’s motivations begins to be explored in depth in chapter 5,
“Spiritual Wife.” Some of Toni’s most important contributions to psychology
stem from an essay she wrote called “Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche,”
in which she outlines four structural forms for the “chief perspectives of
women” (p. 90): Hetaira, Medial, Amazon, and Maternal. Space does not allow me
to define and explicate them… and I could not do better than Healy in doing so.
For my purposes here, it is enough to say that the Medial operates akin to a
Muse for the creative man, while the Maternal is self-explanatory. Here is
where it gets complex. Jung did not believe that one woman could be both his
Muse and the head of his household—his wife Emma served in the role of the
latter, raising their children and overseeing the home, while Toni served as
the Medial. One might bleed this down into the vulgar Madonna and Whore, but
that is impossible to do while absorbing Healy’s portrait of Toni.

Perhaps I am lucky (as was Joe
Campbell with Jean Erdman, although they did not have children)—my own wife has
been both for me (the Medial is a “prophetess and psychic seer,” p. 90;
fittingly, my wife is a psychic medium) and so, for me, Jung’s thesis looks
more like Convenience than Truth. This dual role in one woman, I should say in
fairness, can at times be destructive when we consider Jackson Pollock’s muse
and wife, Lee Krasner or Sylvia Plath to Ted Hughes, although destructive
marriages for artists and poets are not all that unusual. In the case of Jung,
Toni, and Emma, this triangle, which went on for decades, was awkward and
painful for Emma and Toni both.

There is no doubt that Toni
shepherded Jung through dark nights of the soul at her own peril. At one point,
she was determined to marry him, a notion that Jung rejected out of hand. It
could be said that this tumultuous relationship led Toni Wolff to pay the
ultimate price: death by broken heart.

Toni Wolff & C. G. Jung,
like a good analyst, operates on many levels. Healy covers the history of
analytical psychology, from the main ideas to the Clubs and gathering places
funded by wealthy American heiresses as well as illuminating the key phases of
Jung’s career through the contributions of and disagreements with Toni Wolff.
For instance, Toni had no use for Alchemy, and Jung took on another Medial in
order to push that segment of his work forward.

The man who built towers like
Bollingen out of stone as well as scientific and mythological towers out of
sheer intellect and depth journeying was complex and suitably human for the
tasks at hand. Toni Wolff was indispensible to the process. Nan Savage Healy
mediates between the two with the effortless grace that only comes from years
of committed toil.

We should all be thankful that she
stumbled upon that essay by Wolff those many years ago.

Thursday, May 25, 2017

“You’re not cool, you’re
chilly. And chilly ain’t never been cool.” [George Carlin, from one of his HBO
specials]

You best get ready—this isn’t
your (normal? regular?) traditional
review. I am not even sure, after reading The
Tao of Cool, that a review is even a COOL thing to do, nontraditional or
not. Nothing about this book, which is [loosely] (as in, shares a common word
in the title and the same number of chapter-poems) based on the Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu is presented in
an expected way. For instance, the subtitle is on the back of the book, and
reads: “Deconstructing the Tao Te Ching
[:] from the Notebooks of Snafu Trismegistus [,] Bodhisattva of Universal
Cool.”

Now, (normally) I would
question such a statement. In one of my other lives as an academic editor, at
least once a year I edit papers from a writer who promotes himself as a
“thought leader.” That always makes me cringe. But, in this case, Bodhisattva
of Universal Cool sort of elegantly, exactly sums it up.

As I sat down to read The Tao of Cool [perhaps it’s even
better standing up… a problematic psoas muscle kept me from testing this idea],
my academic side dutifully pulled my copy of the Tao Te Ching, translated by D. C. Lau. Turns out,
synchroserendipitously, that I had read it exactly
13 years ago. Cool, I thought.

Perhaps not so much.

What is a deconstruction,
anyway? I am not going to pull a definition from some online dictionary,
because I am now cooler than that. I’ve done my share of deconstruction, which,
to be of any value, involves some kind of re-construction. But isn’t that what
authors (cool ones anyway) always do? Everything is through a lens, through
experience, just like the actor.

And that seems to be the
coolest, most hipikat [definition on
p. 9 of the Introduction] way to engage with The Tao of Cool. The deconstruction came and went in the sublime Darkness
of the writer’s toil—what we get between the covers is pure Light.

Horden pulls no punches in the
Introduction. He tells it like he sees it. “It” being a, well, scathing survey
of the politico-social landscape. He says that the book has taken “twenty years
to ripen” (p. 5), which seems to be the requisite time for any novice to become
a master—and it takes a master to produce a work like this. Perhaps the
Introduction is a good litmus test to see if you are cool enough to withstand
the barrage of wisdom that takes the uncool and melts it into oblivion. If you
can’t get through the first 10 pages, read something else, as Horden says
(better than I) on page 1.

I have to say, prior to reading
the 81 chapters, I thought I was pretty cool. But when one reads, in chapter 6:
“Only the profoundly Uncool talk about spirituality/religion/and the sacredness
of everything” (p. 18) I had to question where I was on this particular scale.
The more I progress, the less I talk, but talk I still do.

For those inclined to make a
comparison between The Tao of Cool and
Lao Tzu’s text, try chapter 10. Then, really, just put Lao Tzu away. Flipping
back and forth, line by line, is the opposite of Cool.

Chapter 15 and some subsequent
chapters brought to mind what the Beats were doing with words and mind-jazz
decades ago (“The Uncool is muzak./The Cool is Jazz,” p. 88). Lines like “Dig./True
hipkats are so far gone they’re already on their way back” (p. 27) recall
Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Corso. If anyone was channeling hipikat outside of the actual jazz musicians like Charlie Parker
and John Coltrane, it was them. Difference is, the Beats were chasing story
down a highway full of traps—they were ultimately consigned forever to a town called
Uncoolsville when the rhythm-car spit-spit and blam-blammed amid their own
frailties and distractions. Jim Morrison was on the right track for awhile as
well, especially with his poetry: “The Cool is always having a near-death
experience” (chapter 25) but he ultimately kept going. Same with Hunter S
Thompson, who came to mind during my read of chapter 41. Before we judge any of
these would be hipikats too harshly,
however, it seems that especially Kerouac and his buddy Neil Cassady weren’t
too far off the mark, as chapter 45 tells us: “Joyriding is better than
anything else” (p. 57) and the whole group—especially in this case, Corso—got
close considering “A healthy fascination with death is hipper/than an unhealthy
fascination with life” (p. 62). Maybe Tom Waits is a hipikat. If he is, he’s too Cool to say.

If I have any hope of being
Cool, even for a moment, I had better leave it here, and give Snafu Trismegistus,
the Bodhisattva of Cool, the (nearly) last word:

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Dear Mary, Rupert
M. Loydell’s twentieth collection of poetry, is a series of meditations on the
Virgin Mary and the circumstances of her miraculous conception. True to form,
Loydell, a painter as well as poet, approaches the mystery through the dual
lens of words and images. And one does not have to be raised Catholic like
myself to appreciate the large number of images available to us that take as
their subject Mary’s receiving of the news from the angel Gabriel and her
subsequent life as mother of the Savior, Jesus Christ.

Indeed, “the appearance/of the angel,” as Loydell says in
the poem “A Process of Discovery”: “the event/the moment/as pregnant/as the
Madonna” (18). With this encounter heavily weighted from the onset, Loydell
explores the crafting of the image, as in “Colour by Numbers,” although he does
not take the elitist angle of painting as something only for the highly
trained—especially with religious matters as its subject—but something for
everyone, something as simple as a color by numbers painting, which you can
“take… to the next level” (26). This is more Bob Ross than Old Masters, and
refreshingly so.

In the poem “Cimabue” he writes: “everything in Italy/is a
love letter to God” (28) a statement that recalls to me the atmosphere and
impact of the art in the Martin McDonagh film In Bruges. Even the lowest and bleakest of souls are not immune to
such pervasive and powerful displays of Holy, Heavenly art. The next poem,
“Hidden,” continues and expands this theme: “There are hidden angels/everywhere
in Tuscany./If you find one keep quiet/and speak of it only to yourself/let
meaning turn to whisper” (29).

Given that the Angel and Mary are the lead characters in Dear Mary’s narrative, we have to ask
who or what serves as the Mediator between the Spirit and the Flesh. The very
act of the Immaculate Conception (real or metaphorical) elevates Mary to
near-Spirit, but she is still (and importantly) Flesh. Loydell’s poems and the
vast array of paintings out in the world serve as Mediators, but the Reader
must function as Mediator as well. I left the Catholic Church at 21 to become the Mediator of my own
experience, rather than relying on priests, nuns, and long-gone prophets.

“How to Say It” uses the Painter as Mediator: “He does not
know how to say it,/how to talk about the moment/he has been asked to paint,/so
he simply colours the story in” (39). Loydell leaves ample space in his poems
for the Reader to do the same.

Let us not confuse “simple” for “easy” here. On some level,
even the Writer “colours the story in” with a transcendent element beyond words,
if the angels/Muses are kind and the artist remains open to the experience, as
Mary was. Extending this metaphor, the Inspiration fills the artist’s vessel
like the Savior fills Mary Mater’s womb.

From pages 51 to 59 is a multi-part poem titled “Shadow
Tryptych” (“after Francis Bacon”), a rich tapestry of insight on the Vision and
Voice of the artist. It sits at the exact midpoint of the collection and serves
appropriately as the central Furnace and Core of Dear Mary.

A highlight of the collection is “Alien Abduction.” The
nexus of angels/demons and aliens is inescapable to ponder, and Loydell’s
well-informed but tongue-and-cheek take will get you smiling while you think.

“How Grey Became” takes us back to color, and keeps you
thinking. Loydell writes: “The colour grey is preferred by people who are
indecisive;/grey is also the colour of evasion and non-commitment.” He then goes
on to say: “Grey is the colour of intellect, knowledge, and wisdom” (65). This
latter interpretation is the one I tend to favor. It’s a proposition put forth
even further in the Live song “The Beauty of Grey.” As I exist day after day
mourning the death of Complexity, I wish there was more grey. More mix. More
middle. Given that, perhaps both interpretations work.

“Out of the Picture” is about none other than Joseph. My
namesake. The biblical character I have most pondered in my life. Loydell gives
him a voice too long in coming. Talk about Complexity…

A more modern take on Mary and Gabriel is “Surveillance
System Annunciation.” What if it all was recorded. Would it clarify or even
further muddle?

The collection is bookended by two essential pieces.First is the Preface by Dr. Jim Harris,
who is the Teaching Curator at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at
the University of Oxford. I highly recommend taking the time to read it, even
if it means reading it after the fact so that your own experiences of the poems
are not colored by his insights, sound as they are.

The collection ends with a Notes section, which illuminates
the source material and inspiration for various poems (for instance, “Dear
Mary” is assembled from the song lyrics of 11 musical artists and other texts).

Like Catholicism itself, the sources and inspirations that
make up Dear Mary are myriad, and the
Mystery is left to the Reader as Mediator to ponder.

Sunday, April 2, 2017

I am going to be up front here. I love this book, which is
in large part due to its main character, Fleur Robins, daughter of an
ultra-Conservative US Senator from Pennsylvania and an alcoholic mother who had
Fleur as a teenager. Fleur is one of the most delightful, complex, and often
contradictory child characters since Holden Caulfield in JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Sheila Tubman in
Judy Blume’s Otherwise Known as Sheila
the Great—two characters that had a profound impact on my childhood and,
subsequently, my life.

Perhaps it is my own growing fascination with Complexity and
Chaos Theory, but I have been noticing a recent trend in storytelling—be it
novels, television, or (to a lesser extent) film—that comes into play with
Sharon Heath’s approach. It began with the male anti-hero in television shows
like The Leftovers and Walking Dead, who is flawed, isolated,
and oftentimes just plain Wrong. That trend has now broadened and extended to
not only female characters, but to entire families. I just finished watching
the debut season of Santa Clarita Diet
on Netflix. Not only are the relationships between spouses, parents and
children, bosses and co-workers, neighbors, and so on incredibly Complex and
always on the verge of or in the midst of Chaos, but these multi-level flaws
create a much richer, deeper view of Life as We Know It than I think was ever
possible before.

It is through this lens that I read Sharon Heath’s novel.
Fleur is a study in Dichotomy. Her Nobel-level brilliance couples with a naivety
that makes her the prey of the opposite sex; a brilliant vocabulary and a
tendency to misinterpret what people are saying make for socially awkward
instances and relationship troubles; a dynamic tension between the Private and
Public drives her onward through her pre-teen and early teen years with a speed
and recklessness fraught with peril and outsized Consequences.

Indeed, aren’t we all, in this post-post-Modern age of sound
bites, tweets, and swiping left or right, struggling with the same? The connection
between brilliance and lack of common sense; our struggles for True
Communication in a world of digital shorthand and diminishing attention spans; of
the Public and Private masks that we switch on and off with increasing rapidity;
the lessons that come so fast while we are multi-tasking and trying desperately
to problem solve on micro and macro scales—it all adds up to a life of
Contradictions and Complexity.

This is the life of Fleur Robins. We know from the subtitle
that the first book is part of a trilogy and that Fleur is talking to us, not
from the present, but from the future.This is a brilliant device on Heath’s part because we experience two
points in time simultaneously—Fleur’s experiences (and they are myriad and at
times cringe-worthy) and her later self’s recording them after the benefit of
time, processing, and maturity.

Given that Fleur, mistaken for learning disabled when she
was actually capable of groundbreaking discoveries in Quantum Mechanics when
she was barely in double digits age-wise, is obsessed with questions of the
Void and Time and Life and Death—questions that work in tandem with the events
unfolding in the novel.

But Fleur is not on her own as far as the heavy lifting in
all of this relentless Complexity and Chaos. There are her aforementioned
parents, who have clear arcs of their own; Fleur’s grandparents; the domestic
staff; and the classmates, teachers, and colleagues whom Fleur encounters on
her accelerated journey through the educational system (which takes her from a
loose version of home schooled to a school for the gifted and talented, to
Stanford University).

Although I am tempted to reveal details of Fleur’s
experiences, they are all so wonderfully delightful in their unfolding that I
will instead keep my remarks general and focus on the overall themes the author
employs. As indicated by my choice of title for this review, the Void is a
central feature. Calling to mind the alchemical term nigredo, which is the starting material from which everything is
created or, even better, a place of infinite
possibility, I began to notice the myriad alchemy at work in The History of My Body. There are
gardeners and cooks, and quantum physicists—masters of alchemy all. And the
journeys of love and forgiveness the reader experiences are of course the heart
and soul of alchemy—the transmutation of baser emotions into love. And the
journey is difficult for everyone involved: It was hard to see Fleur’s starting
condition of “she is too dim to be helped” morph into “she’s such a genius, she
doesn’t need help” before continuing on to something resembling a healthy
balance. In line with the quantum physics elements of the book, Fleur’s
philosophy demonstrates an early working of a Theory of Everything—a rich
landscape of overlapping, intertwining, complementary, and at times
contradictory metaphors, thought-arcs, and theories Fleur is always apt to test
with full fervor.

Heath must be commended—there is a thin, dangerous line for
a novelist between such complexity being the beautiful quirk of main character
and an indication of poor planning and execution by a writer unable to bring
their broad worldview into manageable scope. It is clear that Heath has been
purposeful and exacting. Like the best sit-com writers, she repeatedly sets up
a “plant” that plays out more fully as the story it resides in reaches its
crescendo, creating a “mini-explosion” of meaning of which Fleur would wholeheartedly
approve.

Because of her inclination toward diving in head first and
asking questions later, Fleur really does remind me of Holden and Sheila. And
also of Michael from the hit sit-com The
Office. As much as I loved and rooted for him (and precisely because of
this connection) I cringed at least once an episode as his incomplete
understanding of a situation or some mixed-up mathematics that altered the
actual equation of his reality led him to embarrassing and hurtful moments. And
Fleur has more than her share of all of these for a girl her age.

To paraphrase Fleur, stories were made to fill the void.
Especially ones as richly written as this one. I look forward to continuing Fleur’s
adventures when Book 2 comes out.